The Office for Parafictional Research has been established to study the implications of a body of work by artist duo Goldin+Senneby known as Headless. For the past three years, the Stockholm-based collaborators have been investigating an offshore company called Headless Ltd as part of a larger inquiry into strategies of absence, invisibility, and withdrawal. Their project, also called Headless, has emerged in a number of formats thus far, including lectures and readings, a series of newspaper interventions, an author’s personal journal, a suite of etchings, a number of critical essays, a scattering of stage-like tableaux, a documentary film, and—most importantly—a serial novel-in-progress. But Goldin+Senneby’s own position in this remains elusive, as they outsource all representations of their work to independent practitioners and dispatch spokespeople on their behalf for public events.

One such event is The Headless Conference, which shares little of the heady cloak-and-dagger suspense found in the fictional texts that the project spawns. The conference will take the form of an academic symposium on issues pertinent to the discourse surrounding Goldin+Senneby's work. Up for discussion are topics as diverse as the economic theories of George Bataille and the nature of virtual spaces built by offshore finance networks. Participants are to include Angus Cameron, lecturer in human geography at the University of Leicester and Goldin+Senneby's chosen emissary; Brian Droitcour, Rhizome staff writer; Keller Easterling, associate professor at the Yale School of Architecture; Ginny Kollak, director of the Office for Parafictional Research and second-year graduate student at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College; and Allan Stoekl, professor of French at Penn State University.

Triple Canopy is an online magazine that explores how the Web informs the experience of reading literature and viewing artworks. The publication’s development has been inspired in part by a critical engagement with the legacy of Aspen magazine (1965-71). Artists and writers contributed projects to Aspen in the form of easily distributable media such as flip books, flexi-disc records, and paper sculpture. These projects coincided with a broader contemporaneous phenomenon: artworks intended to appear exclusively in magazines. The New Silent event, The Medium Was Tedium, examines how this move from the exhibition space to the printed page has been subsequently repeated by artists in relation to other media, such as television programming and the Internet. Triple Canopy’s editors will discuss practices that traverse mediums and the media with artists Mel Bochner, Daniel Bozhkov, and Erin Shirreff.

Triple Canopy is an online magazine that explores how the Web informs the experience of reading literature and viewing artworks. The publication’s development has been inspired in part by a critical engagement with the legacy of Aspen magazine (1965-71). Artists and writers contributed projects to Aspen in the form of easily distributable media such as flip books, flexi-disc records, and paper sculpture. These projects coincided with a broader contemporaneous phenomenon: artworks intended to appear exclusively in magazines. The New Silent event, The Medium Was Tedium, examines how this move from the exhibition space to the printed page has been subsequently repeated by artists in relation to other media, such as television programming and the Internet. Triple Canopy’s editors will discuss practices that traverse mediums and the media with artists Mel Bochner, Daniel Bozhkov, and Erin Shirreff.

Each year, Rhizome awards grants to eleven emerging artists for the creation of original works of new media art. Established in 2001, the Rhizome Commissions Program has awarded sixty-four grants throughout its history to projects that have gone on to have a great impact in the field of contemporary art. At this event, select artists from the most recent commissioning round will present and discuss their works in progress.

Rhizome presents Cinema Fury, an action-media performance created by Caden Manson / Big Art Group. Organized by Nick Hallett, Cinema Fury will be an immersive installation and a participatory performance that is designed to bring the audience into the action.

In Cinema Fury, Big Art Group will explore the idea of corruption in the information age, and the chaotic possibilities that arise through errors, glitches, and interruptions within digital transmissions. By reinterpreting models of data transmission and decomposition as performance strategies, Cinema Fury opens new interpretive pathways to understanding the process of contemporary “media-ization.” Concepts of transmogrification, both of the folkloric and post-digital varieties, recur throughout. Big Art Group will draw on material from two upcoming major productions: Flesh Tone (2010) and No Show (2011).

Rhizome presents Cinema Fury, an action-media performance created by Caden Manson / Big Art Group. Organized by Nick Hallett, Cinema Fury will be an immersive installation and a participatory performance that is designed to bring the audience into the action.

In Cinema Fury, Big Art Group will explore the idea of corruption in the information age, and the chaotic possibilities that arise through errors, glitches, and interruptions within digital transmissions. By reinterpreting models of data transmission and decomposition as performance strategies, Cinema Fury opens new interpretive pathways to understanding the process of contemporary “media-ization.” Concepts of transmogrification, both of the folkloric and post-digital varieties, recur throughout. Big Art Group will draw on material from two upcoming major productions: Flesh Tone (2010) and No Show (2011).

Friday January 15th, 7pm
at the New Museum, New York, NY
$10 Members/ $12 General PublicBUY TICKETS HERE

Each year, Rhizome awards grants to eleven emerging artists for the creation of original works of new media art. Established in 2001, the Rhizome Commissions Program has awarded sixty-four grants throughout its history to projects that have gone on to have a great impact in the field of contemporary art. At this event, recently commissioned artists Kristin Lucas, Joe McKay, Maria del Carmen Montoya & Kevin Patton and Angelo Plessas will present and discuss their works in progress.

Check out these snapshots of Rhizome's New Silent Series event from last week "Variety Evening at the New Museum." Organized by VVORK, local performers staged works by artists Wojceich Kosma, Adrian Piper, Kristin Lucas, Vladimir Nikolic, Tao Lin, Pierre Bismuth and Claire Fontaine. The acts were presented together in a dramaturgy to be understood as a single performance, allowing for new interpretations of each piece. The evening is intended to be carried on as a single score, with instructions for how it can be repeated at different venues in the future.

Join us next week, Friday Oct. 30th at 7pm, for this month's New Silent Series event "Variety Evening at the New Museum." Berlin-based collective VVORK will present a contemporary variety show, composed of daring and experimental translations of original artworks. Variety is inspired by how culture of all kinds--sound, moving image, graphics--cycles easily between states and forms. For this one-night event, local performers will stage works by artists Wojciech Kosma, Vladimir Nikolic, Tao Lin, Pierre Bismuth, Adrian Piper, Kristin Lucas and Claire Fontaine. Containing readings, video, performance, dance and music, Variety will present the acts together in a dramaturgy that can be understood as a single performance, allowing for new interpretations of each piece. When finished, the evening will be carried on as a single score, with instructions for how it can be repeated at different venues in the future. VVORK is a website (vvork.com) and curatorial project by artists Aleksandra Domanovic, Oliver Laric, Georg Schnitzer and Christoph Priglinger.

This New Silent Series program is made possible by the Austrian Cultural Forum NYC, and the Experimental Television Center, New York.